I almost boarded one the other day but decided not to. I don’t feel comfortable with the pink signs and the flowers. The gesture is nice, but I feel like accepting it is saying “I don’t want to be around men” when that is far from the truth. Of course I support their existence. They provide a safe place for the many women who have been put in unnecessarily uncomfortable situations on the train. But I don’t mind the regular cars.
Then Friday night in Shibuya station I walked into a car headed to Yokohama and as the doors closed I looked around, “wait a minute…” Sure enough there were pink signs, a woman to man ratio I have only encountered at onsens and the air had a slightly more fruity aroma. It was a strange atmosphere. The car was completely quiet yet there seemed to be a certain tension among all the women. Like we all knew that we took a step past mixed and equality into a “no men allowed” zone. Or maybe it was just me who felt that and I wondered if others did too.
I asked myself what kind of statement I was making. But I wasn’t making one - I came here by accident! Stopping at stations along the way I watched the men waiting on the platform as the train crept forward. The train walls and windows seemed miles thick. “I’m here by accident!”, I wanted to say but then really…it didn’t matter. I became curious - how did they see this car?
Further along the way I starting feeling out of place. I’ve possibly written about it before but if not - a quick introduction to my complex: I was a big, tall kid and the girls I grew up with were small and in dance classes. I felt out of place and thought that girls should be that size - not my size. So that was 20 years ago and I’ve grown up since then and so have those tiny girls and for the most part, I have gotten over the idea that women must be small. But sometimes…sometimes it comes back in form of a disconnection I feel from groups of women. Especially when you are in Japan and some of the women cast glances because…well gee I would look at me too if I were from here seeing someone who looks like me from let’s guess where. Anyway back to the point, I felt out of place - like the car was for a class of women that I did not belong to.
Then, snapping me away from stirring my bowl of self-dough, I saw the most amusing thing. An obviously foreign man standing in the middle of the women only car. I watched him for a few moments, wondering if he felt uncomfortable. Did not appear to be. I was happy that he was there. It was an amusing contrast. And I feel bad saying it because the cause of the women’s only cars is important considering the assaults that many women have had to experience but, I was sort of happy that pink signs were not a total wall between me and the other half of humans.